Monday, March 26, 2012

Readdressing the Painting Process

I was recently talking to my friend, and painter, Abigail Wiese Van Cannon about the transitions that paintings undergo. I take a lot of in-progress shots of my work to clearly see the evolution. After staring at a painting for a while it becomes harder to see the changes that occur. I spoke about this in an earlier post, but when Abby coincidentally brought up how interesting it is to see paintings grow from such timid beginnings, I new this topic needed another go-around.

So, in casual conversation with my main squeeze I brought up my appreciation for the different stages of painting, and since he's a photographer, I was curious about how much he knew about the painting process before he met me. (Hoping he'll correct me if I scramble up his words any, since it was a few days ago and my memory isn't the greatest), what I basically took from our convo was that he first understood the depth of the painting process after seeing a good friend of his sketch out landscape paintings before painting them. Of course in my mind he would have told me about how much my work opened his eyes to the many layers of painting... but he was honest and real, and his response still proved a different theory of mine correct. Many people outside of the painting world don't know about, or they never really see, what is underneath the beautiful finished piece. They don't see what was taken out or put into a landscape, or what was enhanced versus what was dumbed-down. The measurement lines and the awkward shapes struggling to work themselves into something recognizable are also hidden. And so, everyone should be aware of the struggle.

Here are the in progress shots of two different paintings. The final completed paintings can be found on my website.















I want to get in the habit of posting more in progress shots on my blog, and just keeping the finished images for my website.

Happy Monday!

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